Not Just Another Teen Movie

This last week I finished two books that I really enjoyed, but they also reminded me of how happy I am not to be a teenager. The worlds of Jessica Darling and Philip Noble are continents and genres apart, but yet they meshed well. That's a good thing since I was bopping back and forth between them.

The Dead Father's Club by Matt Haig reads like the love child of Hamlet and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. The story is a reworking of Hamlet only the Danish prince is eleven-year-old Philip Noble, who lives in Newark-on-Trent (which incidently is the town where the author grew up). The novel is written entirely from Philip's point of view and in his hurried, slightly scattered, punctuation-free voice. Philip first sees his dead father in the family pub. Philip's father reveals many things to him--that he was killed by Philip's uncle (the car accident was no accident), that there is actually a club for fathers who have been murdered, and that if Philip doesn't exact revenge on his uncle by his father's birthday, his dad will be consigned to "The Horrors" (a sort of ghost hell). How Philip deals with this while at the same time living the stressful adolescent life of a middle-schooler (bullies, girls, etc) makes for a intriguing tale. I loved the echoes of Hamlet, which I then wanted to re-read to look for echoes of The Dead Father's Club, but I liked how Haig wasn't constrained by the original.

By the way, Matt Haig's website is fun. There's a humorous (though I don't know if it's supposed to be) tour of Newark-on-Trent led by Haig and some sort of literary reporter. The questions about the town are uttered in such a tone of impassioned seriousness, that I couldn't watch it without snickering.

Switching gears from Newark-on-Trent to Pineville, New Jersey . . . which is the setting of Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty. I believe the novel is classified in many libraries as Young Adult (and I'm a big fan of the YA genre) but I think that this novel is for anybody who experienced angst and embarrassment and alienation in high school (so pretty much everybody, yeah?). Jessica Darling, our hero, is smart, sarcastic, a track star, and having a really bad sophmore year. Her best friend, Hope, has recently moved away, and Jessica is realizing how alone she really is--her other friends don't really feel like her friends, her mother is fixated on her older, blonder sister's upcoming nuptials, and her dad seems only able to talk to her about running. She has a wicked crush on a senior, who doesn't know she exists (because she's never actually spoken to him.)

It's the usual teen angst, but funneled through a really strong point of view--Jessica's. I suspect this is the type of book that would get banned at the high school level because it talks most realistically about teen sex, drug use, etc. but that is part of it's power I think. There is a touch of the romance/chick lit genre in the story, but I don't think that's a bad thing. It just means one of the plots focuses on a developing relationship, and I have no problem with my main characters getting some action.

I would say Jessica Darling is a tribute to Molly Ringwald's character in Sixteen Candles. At one point, Jessica even references the John Hughes oeuvre (yes, had to check the spelling of that in the dictionary). If you always wondered what happened to that character after the movie ended (when she realized that hunky gymnast was a bit boring), this is the perfect book for you.

The book does end a bit suddenly for me, but the good news is that McCafferty has already finished Charmed Thirds so I don't have to say goodbye to Jessica Darling yet.

I highly recommend spending time with both these characters--their voices are still echoing in my head.